Attitude of healthcare students towards HIV/AIDS and people living with HIV in selected dental and nursing colleges at Chennai, India

Abstract

Introduction:The healthcare personnel and people living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) need to understand each other for advancement of healthcare delivery system. The attitude of healthcare people contributes a lot to achieve good practices towards the same people who are in deliberate need of support for their living. The aim of this study was to assess the attitude of 600 healthcare students in dental and nursing colleges towards HIV/AIDS and people living with HIV infection (PLHIV), and associate the attitude with demographic data. Material and methods:A quantitative study was carried out to obtain information from 600 healthcare students of six nursing and three dental colleges in Chennai, India to assess the level of attitude regarding HIV and PLHIV. Non-probability convenient sampling technique with simple randomization was used for the selection of samples. Reliability of tool was assessed by test-retest method, as r = 0.7, and content validity was obtained from the experts. The collected data was analyzed by using SPSS package version 22.0.Results: Among 600 participants, 53% had negative attitude, 29% had moderately positive attitude, and 18% had positive attitude towards taking care of HIV-infected people. The mean score was 18.91 (range, 0-60) with standard deviation of ±13.07. Their attitude level was significantly associated with the source of information about HIV/AIDS, but not with the other demographic variable such as age, gender, family income, and parents' occupation. Conclusions:Healthcare students are in need of intense teaching program with various methods, which can change their attitude to eliminate the fear and stigma towards HIV/AIDS and taking care of people living with HIV/AIDS.

The Effect of the Infectious Disease Nursing Course on Turkish Students’ Knowledge and Attitudes Towards AIDS: A Quasi-Experimental Study

“…The section that measures knowledge of AIDS consists of 21 items and the options given for each item are "true", "uncertain" and "false". The scale consists of three subscales: transmission (13,10,5,4,12,7,17), prevention and general information (1,11,18,21,3,20,6,8,2) and treatment (9,16,19,14,15 In the study conducted by Aydemir et al, Cronbach alpha value was found to be 0.91 [25]. In our study, the value of Cronbach's alpha was found to be 0.80.…”

“…Insufficient HIV/AIDS knowledge in nurses leads to fear, stigmatization and reluctance to provide care to individuals with HIV/AIDS. Increasing the level of knowledge is, thus, an important step in reducing nurse's fear, anxiety, and negative attitudes [12][13][14][15].…”

“…According to the literature, the nursing students' level of knowledge of HIV/AIDS is not sufficient and they exhibit negative attitudes towards care [8,12,13,[15][16][17][18][19]. When nursing students received the education on HIV/AIDS, their knowledge level was found to be increased and they had a pos-itive attitude [10,11,[20][21][22][23].…”